Auditory brainstem's sensitivity to human voices

Yun Nan; Erika Skoe; Trent Nicol; Nina Kraus

doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2014.12.013

Auditory brainstem's sensitivity to human voices

Yun Nan^*, Erika Skoe, Trent Nicol, Nina Kraus

^*Corresponding author for this work

Communication Sciences and Disorders

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Differentiating between voices is a basic social skill humans acquire early in life. The current study aimed to understand the subcortical mechanisms of voice processing by focusing on the two most important acoustical voice features: the fundamental frequency (F0) and harmonics. We measured frequency following responses in a group of young adults to a naturally produced speech syllable under two linguistic contexts: same-syllable and multiple-syllable. Compared to the same-syllable context, the multiple-syllable context contained more speech cues to aid voice processing. We analyzed the magnitude of the response to the F0 and harmonics between same-talker and multiple-talker conditions within each linguistic context. Results establish that the human auditory brainstem is sensitive to different talkers as shown by enhanced harmonic responses under the multiple-talker compared to the same-talker condition, when the stimulus stream contained multiple syllables. This study thus provides the first electrophysiological evidence of the auditory brainstem's sensitivity to human voices.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	333-337
Number of pages	5
Journal	International Journal of Psychophysiology
Volume	95
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2014.12.013
State	Published - Mar 1 2015

Funding

This work was supported by the 973 Program [ 2014CB846103 ], by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [ 31221003 and 31471066 ], by the 111 project [ B07008 ], and by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities . The physiological data were collected when Y. Nan was a visiting scholar at Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory. We owe our thanks to members of the Auditory Neuroscience Lab for their valuable input. We thank Dr. Patrick C.M. Wong and Dr. Francis Wong for help in recording stimuli. We thank Dr. Ann Bradlow for her advice on the experimental design and Wuxia Yang for her help in the behavioral validation data collection. We also thank the reviewer for the insightful comments.

Keywords

Auditory brainstem
Frequency following response
Voice

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Neuroscience
Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
Physiology (medical)

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10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2014.12.013

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title = "Auditory brainstem's sensitivity to human voices",

abstract = "Differentiating between voices is a basic social skill humans acquire early in life. The current study aimed to understand the subcortical mechanisms of voice processing by focusing on the two most important acoustical voice features: the fundamental frequency (F0) and harmonics. We measured frequency following responses in a group of young adults to a naturally produced speech syllable under two linguistic contexts: same-syllable and multiple-syllable. Compared to the same-syllable context, the multiple-syllable context contained more speech cues to aid voice processing. We analyzed the magnitude of the response to the F0 and harmonics between same-talker and multiple-talker conditions within each linguistic context. Results establish that the human auditory brainstem is sensitive to different talkers as shown by enhanced harmonic responses under the multiple-talker compared to the same-talker condition, when the stimulus stream contained multiple syllables. This study thus provides the first electrophysiological evidence of the auditory brainstem's sensitivity to human voices.",

keywords = "Auditory brainstem, Frequency following response, Voice",

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year = "2015",

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AU - Nan, Yun

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AU - Nicol, Trent

AU - Kraus, Nina

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N2 - Differentiating between voices is a basic social skill humans acquire early in life. The current study aimed to understand the subcortical mechanisms of voice processing by focusing on the two most important acoustical voice features: the fundamental frequency (F0) and harmonics. We measured frequency following responses in a group of young adults to a naturally produced speech syllable under two linguistic contexts: same-syllable and multiple-syllable. Compared to the same-syllable context, the multiple-syllable context contained more speech cues to aid voice processing. We analyzed the magnitude of the response to the F0 and harmonics between same-talker and multiple-talker conditions within each linguistic context. Results establish that the human auditory brainstem is sensitive to different talkers as shown by enhanced harmonic responses under the multiple-talker compared to the same-talker condition, when the stimulus stream contained multiple syllables. This study thus provides the first electrophysiological evidence of the auditory brainstem's sensitivity to human voices.

AB - Differentiating between voices is a basic social skill humans acquire early in life. The current study aimed to understand the subcortical mechanisms of voice processing by focusing on the two most important acoustical voice features: the fundamental frequency (F0) and harmonics. We measured frequency following responses in a group of young adults to a naturally produced speech syllable under two linguistic contexts: same-syllable and multiple-syllable. Compared to the same-syllable context, the multiple-syllable context contained more speech cues to aid voice processing. We analyzed the magnitude of the response to the F0 and harmonics between same-talker and multiple-talker conditions within each linguistic context. Results establish that the human auditory brainstem is sensitive to different talkers as shown by enhanced harmonic responses under the multiple-talker compared to the same-talker condition, when the stimulus stream contained multiple syllables. This study thus provides the first electrophysiological evidence of the auditory brainstem's sensitivity to human voices.

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Auditory brainstem's sensitivity to human voices

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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